After a period of five years, the first major revamp to the Perl scripting language was released — v5.10.

An excerpt from News.com:

The new version has some features designed to make programming a notch easier, according to the announcement last week. Among those features is a “say” command that eases some text-output chores, a “switch” operator to send a program in various directions depending on different situations, and improvements to the all-important “regular expression” methods for handling text. The Perl interpreter, which runs Perl programs, also is faster and requires less memory, the foundation said.

Debuting in 1987, Perl, the creation of Larry Wall, originally intended to simplify text manipulation. Over the years, the language has been modified and used as a mainstay programming language.

More information:

Perl language upgraded (InfoWorld)

Perl 5.10 Released (Linux Electrons)

Perl sees first official update in five years (TechSpot)